Waking Up
by Mintaka14
Summary: Emilie Agreste has been brought back to life. Gabriel Agreste has got what he wanted, but there is a price to pay, and Gabriel is going to find out just how high the price is. Fair warning, this is a short, dark story with character deaths.


**Waking Up**

**A Miraculous Ladybug Fanfiction**

**By Mintaka14**

Emilie Agreste was woken by a kiss. The first thing she saw was her husband's cool grey eyes watching her with an anxiety that he was trying to conceal, but he'd never been able to fool her. She lifted one tremulous hand to touch his face.

"Gabriel," she said, and her voice was a hoarse croak. She tried again, and this time her voice was stronger. "Gabriel, my darling."

He gave a dry sob and Emilie found herself gathered into a crushing embrace. For a long time, they stayed like that, wrapped in each other's arms.

"You've come back to me," Gabriel breathed like a prayer, and he helped her to her feet. Every step was like walking on knives as her limbs remembered how to move. Emilie trod with painstaking slowness through the house, Gabriel hovering at her elbow to catch her every time her unused legs gave way. There was no talking, no music, no sign of any of the staff, and she found herself wondering if Sleeping Beauty had woken to a silent castle and found it creepy.

As they moved into the vast marble foyer there was an eerie quiet broken by the harsh, racking sobs of a boy (a young man) huddled over on the floor. His golden hair caught the faint shafts of light.

"_Adrien?"_ Was this her little boy? "How long have I been asleep?"

She tried to hurry to him, forcing her legs to work, her arms outstretched, and that was when she realised that he was cradling someone in his arms. The girl looked so young, freckles standing out in sharp relief against the deathly pallor of her skin. A red ribbon unravelled like a splash of blood from her blue-black hair and her eyes were closed.

_As white as snow_

_As red as blood_

_As black as the raven's wing_

Adrien was breathing _No no no_ like an entreaty, his body shaking with a deep, heaving grief as he hugged the girl's body closer, and Emilie reached for her son.

"Adrien," her husband said behind her, and Emilie marvelled at how he could sound so happy in the face of their son's devastation. "Adrien, look who's here!"

Adrien looked up, but his eyes were too empty to focus on her. Emilie reached down and gently touched her hand to his face, feeling rough stubble under her fingertips where she had unconsciously expected the baby-soft skin of her little boy. Those green eyes that she loved so much were so lost.

And then they focused behind her. On Gabriel. And the noise Adrien made then was more animal than human.

Adrien lowered the girl's lifeless body to the floor with infinite care and stood, his ice-green eyes fixed on his father.

"Adrien, your mother is back. I brought her back, for you!"

At that, Adrien surged forwards. The only sign that he was even aware of Emilie's presence was the fact that he didn't shove past her to get to Gabriel, but the murderous light that flashed in his eyes startled her.

"You bastard!" he snarled. "_You killed her!_"

"To bring your mother back!" Gabriel said on a rising note of desperation, and Emilie felt a thread of ice cold foreboding trickle down her spine.

Adrien shifted that disturbing green gaze to his mother.

"Did he tell you what he did to bring you back?" he asked her.

Emilie didn't want to hear the answer.

"Tell me," she said steadily, ignoring Gabriel's cry of "No!"

"Your husband became a supervillain called Hawkmoth," her son told her in a curiously flat voice. "He terrorised Paris for years, used everyone's negative emotions against them, killed thousands of people and the only reason Paris is still standing is because there was a hero who could magically fix everything every time she won. He killed _me_, several times."

Adrien was ignoring the horrified denial from his father, and Emilie's eyes never left her son. Surely, surely that must be a mistake. Surely Gabriel would never have harmed their most precious treasure, no matter how lost he'd been without her by his side.

"Why?" she whispered.

"To get the ladybug and cat miraculouses," Adrien said baldly. Emilie turned, dazed, to take in the earrings that Gabriel had in his ears now, and the ring he wore. She knew what they were, knew what they meant.

"Oh Gabriel," the words felt as though they'd been torn out of her. "What have you done?"

"Ladybug… Marinette… We fought Hawkmoth back for years. Over and over again. I had no idea my own _father_ was the bastard trying to take my cat miraculous."

That was another shock for Emilie. Her son had wielded the black cat of destruction and chaos.

"But eventually, Hawkmoth wore my lady down." There was a deeper flash of pain in the green depths of his eyes. "He took her miraculous, he threatened her to get me to hand over mine, and he got what he needed to bring you back, mother. But there's a price to pay. There's always a balance. _Isn't that right, father?" _he spat.

"_I brought your mother back!"_ Gabriel snarled back at him. "I would have done anything, paid any price to bring her back and have our family whole!"

"_You killed Marinette!"_ Adrien was screaming, everything about him raw with anguish. _"She was the price you paid. _All she did was try to help people, to try to make things better. I loved her more than anything, and_ you took her from me!"_

"You're a child! You don't know love yet. Your mother…"

Emilie's distraught gaze drifted away across the foyer to the young woman (_Marinette_) lying on the cold marble floor. There were signs of a battle, now that she was disengaged enough to notice, furniture overturned and a vase smashed on the floor in a puddle of water and petals. She could make out scorch marks on the walls, and another body lying in a crumpled heap by the door.

Nathalie.

Strangely, it was the sight of Nathalie Sancouer that broke Emilie. Out of everything else, too big, too horrific to process, Nathalie was the final _tap_ that shattered the wall of crystalline disbelief that protected her. Her former assistant and friend was lying oddly, one hand pressed to her heart and the other outstretched, clutching a very familiar peacock brooch. Emilie sucked in a breath, remembering the last time she had tried to wear that brooch, and falling into pain and death as it twisted her up. And Gabriel had handed it to Nathalie, knowing what it had done to Emilie. He had done that.

Gabriel Agreste's dream of a happy family ended with the resounding _crack!_ of Emilie's hand meeting Gabriel's cheek.

"You should have left me dead," she said, and her voice was as cold as the depths of winter.

His own hand drifted up, dumbfounded, to touch the spreading red mark, and if she had been watching, Emilie would have seen the moment when he realised the scope of what he had done, and what he'd lost.

But Emilie had turned away, her arms going around her son to gather him close as their hearts broke together.


End file.
